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Two years after he ran into traffic and was struck by an oncoming car, a Columbus man is suing
the makers of the controversial beverage that he says made him do it.

Richard “Tommy” Whaley, 28, has sued Phusion Projects, the Chicago-based maker of Four Loko.
The suit blames the “dangerous” alcoholic beverage for his irrational behavior and says the company
failed to warn consumers about the drink’s potency.

Whaley also is seeking damages from City Brewing Co., of La Crosse, Wis., which brewed and
bottled the drink; distributor Superior Beverage Group, of Mansfield; and Cincinnati-based United
Dairy Farmers, which operates the store that sold Whaley his fateful Four Lokos. Whaley’s suit was
filed on Aug. 31 in Richland County Common Pleas Court because of Superior’s offices there.

It was just after 6 a.m. on Sept. 2, 2010, when Whaley, then a 26-year-old Fredericktown
resident, ran out onto Rt. 3 near the Knox County Fairgrounds.

He’d been drinking for hours at a nearby friend’s house, chugging nearly all of the three
23.5-ounce cans of Four Loko he’d bought the night before.

The driver of a southbound Dodge Stratus never saw him coming.

“He was just there,” Kurt Swope of Mount Vernon told an officer at the time.

Whaley was flown to Grant Medical Center in critical condition. Witnesses said he was hit so
hard that he flipped several times and was launched nearly 10 feet into the air. His shoe was found
on top of a building 100 feet away.

His blood-alcohol level at the hospital was 0.198 percent, according to the highway patrol
report. A person is presumed intoxicated in Ohio at 0.08 percent.

“The amount of alcohol he consumed should have caused him to lose consciousness,” the lawsuit
alleges. “However, due to Four Loko’s high caffeine amount ... he remained awake and in an agitated
and irrational state.”

Four Loko, originally a caffeinated, high-alcohol beverage invented by three Ohio State
University graduates in 2005, rose to notoriety in 2010, when colleges across the country began
attributing the drink to blackouts and injuries. Some schools banned it from campus. Facing
pressure from the Food and Drug Administration, Phusion announced in November 2010 that it would
remove caffeine, guarana and taurine from Four Loko.

Phusion is facing a similar suit in Illinois involving the death of a 15-year-old boy who
drank two Four Lokos and was hit by a car in 2010. In an emailed statement, the company said it
cannot comment on pending lawsuits.

“Of course, it is important to remember that just because a lawsuit is filed doesn’t mean the
allegations in it have merit,” the statement said.

Whaley had a history of trouble with alcohol. According to Mount Vernon Municipal Court
records, he was convicted earlier in 2010 of disorderly conduct while intoxicated and operating a
vehicle while intoxicated. Both times, he was ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous. While Whaley
has mostly recovered from his injuries, the former landscaper still walks with a limp and will
never be able to return to physical labor, said John Rinehardt, Whaley’s lawyer.